7 Dramatic Trends Shaping the Teaching Profession

The teaching force has “ballooned,” according to CPRE. Pre K-12 teachers make up the largest occupation group in the U.S., and they’re growing at a higher rate than the student population.

Some factors contributing to this growth include the number of prekindergarten teachers, ESL teachers, special education teachers, and those teaching elementary enrichment classes such as art, music, or computer science to most students in elementary schools.

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The number of new teachers has increased from the 1980s. There were 65,000 first-year teachers in 1987-88, and over 200,000 by 2007-08.

While most are recent college graduates, a good portion of the teaching force is older but new to the profession. According to the CPRE report, the implications of this trend are that “new teachers can be a source of fresh ideas and energy.” But on the other hand, being taught by veteran teachers “can make a positive difference for students’ academic achievement.”

(Photo: Klaus Vedfelt)

A lack of minority teachers was seen as a major problem in the 1980s and 1990s. The good news is this trend is shifting. There were 325,000 minority teachers in 1987-88 and over 642,000 by 2007-08. The growth rate of minority teachers outpaced the rate of white teachers.

According to the report:

The widespread efforts over recent decades to recruit more minority teachers and place them in schools serving disadvantaged and minority student populations have been very successful. This has been something of an unheralded victory. While commentators and researchers have tended to discuss the minority teacher shortage and the outcome of minority recruitment efforts in dire and pessimistic terms, the data show that such efforts and expenditures have worked very well.

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Despite the influx of teachers from different backgrounds, the teaching force has steadily become less stable. According to the report, between 40 to 50 percent of beginning teachers leave the profession within five years. There was a 34 percent increase from 1998 to 2008 in the number of teachers leaving the profession after one year.

A negative result of teacher turnover, according to the report, is that the rates are a “major factor behind the problems that many schools have staffing their classrooms with qualified mathematics, science and other teachers. Increases in turnover among minority teachers, especially in disadvantaged schools, undermine efforts to recruit new teachers in hard-to-staff schools and to diversify the teaching force.”

However, the report states that all of this data also suggests a big opportunity. “The largest occupation in the nation is being expanded, replaced, and re-made.”

(Photo: Steve Debenport)